EX FOOTIE ACE WALKS FREE

SPOOKY PHOTOBOMB

Ghoulish 'Scream mask' face appears in the background of mum of two's selfie

One of these accounts was used to target TripAdvisor's page on the app, it said.

"These kinds of practices are difficult to confront and resolve in one swoop", WeChat said in a statement translated from Chinese by Campaign Asia.

"This game of cat and mouse will take place over time. We will continue to strengthen our technological means to protect the integrity and fairness of the platform.

"We continue to think any kind of false data will have a greatly harmful effect on those who choose to respect the rules."

Dan Newling News

The factory's operators earn their money by charging to boost hit rates on websites

WeChat released photographs of what it said was the fake view factory.

The photos shows hundreds of smart phones racked on metal frames. The phones seem to be connected to four computer monitors.

The set up appears to enable one or two people to simultaneously direct the activities of the hundreds of "bot" smartphones.

TripAdvisor's critics say the site it is riddled by fake reviews, which they say can cause significant financial impact on smaller hotels and restaurants.

But the site's co-founder Steve Kaufer has rejected the criticism, claiming he uses “technology borrowed from the banking industry” and specialist fraud detectors to combat the problem.

Trip Advisor

A top restaurant owner took revenge on a scathing TripAdvisor review by posting an equally cutting rebuttal telling them not to come back

Two years ago a Bournemouth-based online reputation management company cast specific doubt on the integrity of TripAdvisor's Chinese operation.

Chris Emmins, co-founder of Kwikchex, found some “amazingly prolific” Chinese reviewers - including one who posted 2,633 hotel and attraction reviews in four years.

Another "reviewer" claimed to have stayed in 51 Paris hotels in a single month – while at the same time posting reviews on 50 other hotels in several other countries.

A spokesman for TripAdvisor pointed out that the bots did not boost fake TripAdvisor reviews of businesses, but rather it appeared to read pieces of editorial content by TripAdivsor.

He said: “This issue relates to TripAdvisor’s presence on WeChat, the Chinese social media site and we absolutely support the efforts of Tencent (which owns WeChat) to clamp down on practices like this on its site.

"To be clear, the TripAdvisor site is unaffected; this issue does not relate to fraud on TripAdvisor itself, and we have robust measures in place to protect our content from those who might try to cheat the system.

"We are working to get to the bottom of this issue as we are totally opposed to the use of bots to boost social media views.”

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368